Seasons
by apriiil
Summary: Spreading her wings and going off on her own after her divorce is finalised, Lucy finds herself in Crocus. What she didn't expect, though, is to be given a reason to stay there.
1. Summer

This is my holiday story for this year. It was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but it got away from me when I decided to make it the Christmas/holiday fic. I originally started this way before the manga ended, so that's why this particular story will not follow the canon ending.

Anyway, it's just my usual plain, kind of fluffy, sort of angsty fic. I don't really know how to do anything else, and I was kind of on the fence about posting this at all since I recently had all of my writing flaws (or whatever you want to call them) pointed out to me, and of course, this story would be no different...

Anyway, enjoy (I hope). The next four parts will be posted over the next few days.

* * *

 **Summer**

Closing the door softly behind herself, Lucy didn't even look around at her small room at the inn before she was leaning down to begin unzipping her boots and carrying herself over to the twin bed in the centre of the space. Once down, the side of her face pressed into the firm mattress, she decided she didn't quite want to get up, not even with the afternoon sun filtering in through the window and shining into her eyes. It had been a long time since she'd come to Crocus, and Lucy couldn't tell if her exhaustion was just from the tiring journey, or if it was her age slowly but surely creeping up on her.

Whatever the case was, Lucy just didn't feel at all like moving from where she lay. However, as tempted as she was to stay right there, the leather of her boots still sticking to the middle of her thighs were making it difficult to relax. And after wearing them all day, she was dying to get them off.

With a gentle sigh, Lucy turned and struggled to pull herself up, her tired muscles protesting and making her groan. The worn leather boots were already unzipped, so all Lucy had to do was pull them off, and once she did, she only tossed them onto the ground by the foot of the bed, and then collapsed back down onto the mattress once again.

Lucy had never actually planned on visiting Crocus. When she'd left Magnolia with just the one canvas backpack, the one she'd dropped by her room door just a few moments earlier, all Lucy'd had on her mind was leaving. It didn't matter where she ended up, she'd just wanted to do it alone. It had been a long time since she'd done something on her own, always having had Natsu by her side. But now… Now she didn't have that. Not really, at least, not with their divorce being finalised.

It had been a long time coming in Lucy's eyes, after trying and failing for three years to get pregnant, and then having to cope with losing their newborn just days after she'd been born. They'd never figured out just why they'd had so much trouble conceiving before Ember – and neither had really wanted to know, to be honest; they'd just agreed that it wasn't something that was meant to be and had left it at that. It had been the only way to actually deal with it at the time. But even having said that, things had never been the same after they'd given up on trying to start their own little family again. Without a guild and without a family to keep them grounded, they'd had no reason to stay in Magnolia.

So they'd travelled. They'd sold most of what they'd owned, packed up the rest of it, and gone to explore the world side by side, like Natsu had always promised they'd do together one day.

And honestly, Lucy had loved it. She'd loved seeing everything the world had to offer and being able to experience it all with her best friend. The years they'd spent travelling from one exotic place to the next had been one of the best times of her life. But, they hadn't been able to spend the rest of their lives drifting from country to country and town to town, as much they'd loved doing so. They'd eventually had to settle down again, and that was where things had really started to become stale.

They'd just fallen out of love somewhere along the line. And after a while, they'd stopped seeing each other as the love of their life. They'd returned to nothing more than good friends – the best of friends, even – but they'd stopped loving each other. At least in the way they _should_ , anyway.

They'd talked about the idea of spending some time apart for a while before they'd accepted that things were never going to be the same, but the minute they'd started spending some time apart, they'd both known that it wasn't going to help.

Considering all things though, after they'd been sitting across from each other and signing the papers that would make them no longer husband and wife, they'd just felt so _relieved_ to finally have it over and done with. And they'd laughed about it as well, finding it more than amusing than any sane person would've that being married to each other had just put a massive weight on each of their shoulders and it had really _sucked_.

But, that wasn't to say that it hadn't been a sad time for them either, because it had been. They'd shared so much over the years – so many amazing, happy memories had been made and shared together… And they'd always thought that they would be it for each other, that they'd always be happy and be able to face anything just _because_ they were with each other. So it had been a little difficult to accept that the one thing they had always believed in – _each other_ – had actually failed them, after all that time.

After that though, it hadn't taken Lucy very long to realise that she couldn't actually stay there. Natsu had realised the same thing, and so after trying to just co-exist peacefully, they'd finally decided to go their separate ways. So Natsu and Happy had gone off to train, maybe spend some time with Sting and Rogue and help train their adopted twin girls on Dragon Slayer magic, and Lucy had just gone back to exploring the world again, and looking for some place to maybe call home at some point.

And that was how she'd come to be in Crocus, five months since she'd signed that last document that tied her to her best friend, and three months since they'd gone their separate ways. And really, the only reason she'd ended up in Crocus at all was because summer had well and truly come to Fiore now, and she couldn't spend another night camping outside and waking up covered in sweat. Crocus had just happened to the closest city to where she'd been, so she'd trekked all day in the blistering sun to the nearest train station, just so she could arrive before night and be able to have a bed to sleep on and a proper shower for a change. She'd tried her best to conserve money by not spending it unnecessarily on hotels and inns, but occasionally Lucy liked to treat herself to a room, although that usually ended up being about once a week.

She liked her showers, and it was hard to come by fresh-water springs those days.

Still… As much as Lucy knew she really needed to take a shower and get out of her sweaty clothes, she just couldn't be bothered. She was exhausted, and the smell of clean linen had always been a weakness of hers.

"Maybe I'll just… shower in the morning…"

Not even the late afternoon sun filtering in through the window and straight into her eyes could stop Lucy from drifting off to sleep where she lay, sprawled out across the double mattress with her feet still hanging off the edge.


	2. Autumn

Thanks for the reviews on the first chapter! I will say now that the timeline for this story is purposely vague, meaning I don't specifically mention months or definite amounts of time (if that makes sense). That said, there is a definite amount of time that has passed since the guild disbanded in this particular AU/story, and it's mentioned in this chapter. Hopefully the timeline for this story makes some sense, even if my notes explaining it don't.

* * *

 **Autumn**

Although Lucy had never planned on visiting Crocus, she hadn't been able to bring herself to leave after the first week she'd spent there, just catching up on sleep and exploring the outskirts of the city where she'd been staying. Before long, she'd decided to stay a little longer, and had ended up getting herself a reasonably good deal on a room in a bed-and-breakfast in the city; it had still ended up being cheaper than rent, and even if she had decided to stay, she'd never known if it would be a permanent thing so she hadn't wanted to get herself caught in a rental agreement.

The leaves were just beginning to turn at that point and Lucy thought it was beautiful. Crocus had changed a lot over the years. It had become nicer once Hisui became Queen after her father's passing. Parks were built, trees were planted in the wider streets, and the city became more welcoming of magic than it had ever been before - well, to some extent. Lacrimas powered almost everything, and on every street corner, posters for magic classes were found. Most of them were fake, Lucy already knew, but she still remembered how Crocus had been right after the Eclipse Gate accident. The city had been divided on how they saw magic. Some were thankful for it, mostly for all the mages had done in the aftermath. But others had been stuck in believing that it was something to be controlled; that none of it would've happened without magic.

Still, a lot had changed, and the longer Lucy stayed, the more Lucy fell in love with it all.

There was a crisp bite to the air that evening, and it was the first time that Lucy had needed to bring out something to cover her arms in all the time she'd been in Crocus – which, granted, had really only been three months, but it had still been hot just a week earlier. But the yellowing leaves drew her attention that evening, and with the pink and orange sky, and the odd dried leaf flying by in the wind, Lucy almost wished she could take a picture of it all. It was such a beautiful sight, and Lucy couldn't take her eyes off the yellowing tree canopies above her and the pink sky filtering through the gaps.

But, Lucy wasn't the only one enraptured by the trees and the sunset that evening. And as she kept aimlessly walking, eyes nowhere near the path, there was another doing the exact same thing, except he was heading straight towards her. Eventually, their paths collided, and Lucy found herself walking literally face-first into someone's chest.

"O-Oh! I'm… I'm sorry! I—"

"I didn't see you there, I'm sor—"

Lucy stepped back quickly as she tried apologising at the same time as the man, cutting each other's apology off. She felt a warmth on her cheeks as she looked up to properly apologise for her blunder, but the only word that came out of her mouth when she saw who was standing in front of her was, "Bickslow?"

He tilted his head as he looked down to her. "Wait, Cosplayer?" he mumbled, and slowly, his confused frown turned into a wide grin as realisation struck. "Holy fucking shit, _seriously_?" In all the years he'd been living in Crocus, he had never actually quite literally bumped into someone, much less someone from the guild.

Lucy couldn't keep her own grin off her face. The last time she'd been Bickslow had been the day that the guild had officially closed. And since then, Lucy could only think that he'd aged well – although that would almost be an understatement. She had a feeling that the goatee he was seemingly sporting those days helped. "What are you… What are you doing here?!" she asked.

"I live here!" Bickslow answered. "What about you?"

"That is a complicated answer," she laughed. She didn't live there, but she was also doing more than just passing through. Bickslow glanced behind himself then before he reached out just to gently rest his hand on her arm to guide her somewhere out of the way. They were standing in the middle of the street, after all. "How have you been though? God, it has to have been, what… Twelve years since the guild disbanded?" Lucy said.

"I'll take your word for it," he chuckled. "But damn, has it really been that long?"

"Twelve years this past March, I think."

"Wow…"

"Almost doesn't feel like it, right?" Lucy said softly.

Bickslow shook his head. "Not at all." So much had happened in those twelve years though. And even if he had a pretty solid reminder for how much time had passed, it still just didn't feel like it. But he was nearing thirty-seven, and sometimes he still felt like the same twenty-something-year-old who'd been pulling pranks in the guild all the time. Just… without the pranks those days. He let out a little sigh when he looked back to Lucy, and smiled again. "It's good to see you, though," he said. "I mean, I know it's probably super fucking strange for me to say that because I don't think we ever actually talked when the guild was still around… But it's still good to see you."

She didn't think it was strange. Not at all. "It's good to see you as well, Bickslow."

And that was when Bickslow decided to do something really stupid, and he asked just a little sheepishly, "Any chance you're, uh… busy right now?"

"Not at all. Why?"

"Well, did you want to get dinner or something?" he asked. Lucy raising an eyebrow at him had him quickly continuing, "I mean, just so we can catch up and all." He shrugged. It wasn't really anything special. He'd only been going out to pick up something dinner for himself anyway. But if Lucy wanted to, then they could go find somewhere to sit and talk. He really did want to catch up with her, even if they had never really been friends in the first place. Apart from his former team and Laxus, he hadn't seen anyone else from the guild in over a decade. He was feeling a little nostalgic all of a sudden and he wanted to share that.

But even if Lucy had had other plans, catching up over dinner seemed like a great idea. "I'd love to do that!" she said with a smile. "Know any good places?"

* * *

"Alright, come on." Bickslow dusted the salt from the fries off his fingers with a napkin and then picked up his drink to take a sip. "Tell me what you've been up to."

They'd ended up in a bar not too far from where they'd run into each other. Lucy had walked past it at least a dozen times, but she'd never gone in until then. Bickslow had said that the inside was better than it looked, and Lucy found that he was right. The food wasn't too bad either.

But, for the most part, while they'd been waiting for their order and then eating, they'd really just been talking about how things had been in the guild and how everyone had been when they'd younger. They'd yet to really talk about how things were for them now.

Lucy just shrugged a little, taking a sip of her own drink through her straw. "I've just been travelling," she answered. That was basically all she'd been up to, anyway.

Bickslow didn't like that answer though. "Oh, fuck off. Give me something more than that," he said jestingly. "I ask you what you've been up to for the last decade, and you say you've been travelling? Come on. I know you can do better than that."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, that's what I have been doing. Not for a decade, but… I haven't really done much else these past few years."

"Okay, so what else have you been doing?" he asked, and Lucy shrugged again. "Fine. Alright, um… Let's see… You get married then?"

Lucy nodded that time. "I did."

"Ah, there you go. To Natsu, right? I always called you two ending up together."

"…And we got divorced right after Christmas last year," she added.

"Oh shit," Bickslow whispered. He hadn't been expecting that in the slightest. "Sorry to hear things didn't work out, I guess."

"There's nothing to be sorry for. Some people are just better off being friends. Besides, Natsu and I are still on good terms."

"Oh. Well, at least you're still friends. That's always nice to hear." It was still disappointing to hear that they'd broken up at all, because he really had always thought that Lucy would end up with Natsu someday and that would be that. But, Bickslow also knew they'd been friends for years in the guild. It would've been a shame to lose that kind of friendship just because they didn't work as a couple.

"Yeah…" Lucy whispered. She looked back up with a renewed smile and let out a little sigh before she asked, "What about you though? Married? Any kids? What about restraining orders?"

Bickslow chuckled quietly to himself. "No restraining orders, thank you very much. At least not in Crocus…" he added quietly. "Also, not married, thank fucking god. But, I do have a daughter."

"A daughter?!"

"Yep. Her name's Taliyah. She turned eleven a couple of weeks ago."

"Wow. That's just… Wow," Lucy whispered. To know that Bickslow of all people had settled down after the guild was almost mind-blowing. He was probably the last person that Lucy had expected to ever settle down and start a family. Then again, if his daughter was eleven, then he definitely hadn't waited long once leaving the guild. "You know, I never really pictured you settling down or anything. How did you, um… How did you meet your girlfriend then?"

"Yeah, neither did I," Bickslow admitted quietly. "And if you mean Tali's mother, then… Funny story, I guess." He shrugged and picked up one of the fries left on his plate. "She hired me for a job when I first got here. She thought she had a ghost stuck in her apartment or something because she kept hearing all these noises at night. Figured it was just a lost soul causing havoc or something so I accepted it thinking it would be easy."

"Uh-huh…"

"Turns out she had a stray cat stuck in her ceiling."

Lucy choked on her drink and a hand flew to her mouth as she tried not to cough and splutter all over the table. "A _cat_?"

Bickslow's grin grew wide as he nodded. "Yep, a cat." Really, it hadn't been at all what he'd been expecting at the time, but it wasn't exactly something he could forget, either. "Well, really, it was a kitten. So she got a kitten out of it." The little black and white kitten all covered in dust and cobwebs still lived to that very day, too. He just happened to sleep a lot more those days.

"How romantic," Lucy giggled. "A cat and a boyfriend."

"I never really dated her, though."

"Wait, what?"

He shrugged again. "I was kind of just passing through and just picking up odd jobs here and there to get by. I didn't exactly want to date anyone or anything. But I was still planning on hanging around for a couple of months since there was still plenty of work available. It was never anything serious, me and her."

Lucy nodded slowly. "I see…" she mumbled. "Sorry for just assuming that you'd be together…" She should know better than anyone that not everything works out perfectly. More fool her for jumping to conclusions.

"It's fine. It doesn't really matter. Anyway, once she found out she was pregnant, I figured I was going to stay in Crocus, so we tried to, uh… I don't know… We tried to _properly_ be together, if that makes sense. We didn't really work out though."

"So what happened with your daughter?"

"Well, I still get to see her all the time, if that's what you mean. We figured out a way to make that work. She just spends more time with her mother. I get to see her like every week now or so now, so it's fine."

"Oh. Well, I'm glad that it all got worked out," Lucy said with a soft smile. "So you're not seeing anyone then?"

"Yeah, me too. And no. What's with the interest in my love life, Cosplayer?"

"I'm just curious, is all."

"Uh-huh. Sure." Bickslow couldn't help but notice the slight pink on Lucy's cheeks as she scowled at him. Apparently he'd missed teasing her of all people more than he'd thought. "Anyway. So you married Natsu, divorced Natsu, and what else? I'm going to guess you two didn't have any kids if you're here in Crocus right now."

Her smile faltered for a moment – something that Bickslow found hard not to notice as well. "No kids. And… nothing, really. I haven't done much since the guild…" There were plenty of things she'd wanted to do, she'd just never found the time to do them. Still, Lucy wasn't really interested in sharing anything about her life to Bickslow, mostly because there wasn't much to share, so with a quiet sigh and forced smile, she did her best to bring the conversation back around to him. "What about your team and Laxus, though?" she asked. "What are they all up to lately? Do they all live in Crocus?"

And once again, Bickslow noticed it. He knew better than to pry and ask Lucy what was wrong or what she was hiding, though. "Well, Ever is off on her honeymoon at the moment. Last I heard, she was in Enca and she's not due back from her trip until the end of January."

"So, she finally married Elfman then?"

"No. God no. Those two didn't even last three months after the guild disbanded." The Strauss siblings had ended up going in the same direction as them once the guild had disbanded. It had been fine at first, but by the time they'd reached Clover, Bickslow had wanted to rip his hair out. Evergreen and Elfman had bickered constantly. Laxus had been permanently zapping everyone because Mirajane had kept trying to feed him fruit and vegetables. Freed had quite literally gone demon on everyone to get them to shut up at one point. And Lisanna had just… played with the wild rabbits and kept wandering off. Honestly, Bickslow had thought about wandering off as well more than once. But still, it hadn't been the best of times, and the last time Bickslow had seen any of the Takeover mages was when Evergreen had spat it and broken up with Elfman. They'd gone their separate ways then. "She's married to a total fucking nerd now. But he makes her happy so I don't have to worry about killing him."

"Well, good for her," Lucy laughed. "And Freed and Laxus?"

"Ah. Freed and Laxus just adopted a baby, if you would believe it."

"Together?"

"Yep."

"No way. Seriously?"

"Seriously," Bickslow chuckled, nodding slightly. "They got together about… ten years ago now? They bought a place here around the same time and they adopted their son about six months ago. He's called Dustin."

"Wow. Honestly, I'm more surprised about that than I am _you_ having a daughter." Although if she thought about it, Freed and Laxus ending up together wasn't all that surprising. The signs had been there for years.

Bickslow rolled his eyes as he leant back against his chair, folding his arms across his chest. "Come on, it's not that surprising."

"Just a little bit," Lucy insisted. "You haven't told me what you're up to these days, though. Well, apart from being a father."

"Oh. Well, I basically just work. I have my own business."

"Yeah?"

Bickslow nodded. "A little magic shop. Not like one of those dodgy ones that were in Hargeon ages ago. Like a proper one. Or, that's what I've been aiming for, at least."

"Really? How'd you get into that?" Lucy asked.

"I'm not really sure, to be honest. This old guy sold the place to me for cheap when I was looking for an apartment. Tali was a couple of months old then, I think," he explained. "The apartment was above the shop, so the shop kind of came with it since it was more like his office, and he'd already been running this crappy little joke and magic store anyway, so I kind of just took over that and made it more legit."

In the beginning though, it had really just been a way to try and get others to see magic in a more positive light. At the time, some of the residents of Crocus had already started to detest mages and magic more and more, despite all of the new Queen Hisui's efforts . It had given rise to scam artists and cruel men who were only interested in making money. Bickslow hadn't wanted to give up working as a mage, but without Fairy Tail, it had been near impossible to do it. The store had been a means of gaining popularity within the community again, allowing other mages like him to once again gain respect. It had taken nearly a year for it really work, but eventually, people would start coming into his store to post flyers for jobs requiring mages, or anyone who was just looking for work, really. Thankfully, magic was much more welcomed those days, like it had been as soon as Hisui had become Queen, but that didn't stop the crooks from trying their best to scam the innocent.

After some time, Bickslow had eventually focused on turning the store around. He still sold a few of the trick items, the ones that everyone wanted for their parties to show off with (it was hard not to sell them when they were always in such high demand), but he also sold useful items. Like lacrimas of all sizes, and books for those who wanted to learn about a different magic, and even the odd silver Celestial key.

"Wow. You're full of surprises, aren't you?" Lucy said in awe. "First you have a kid, and now you're a business owner? Impressive."

"What can I say? I like to surprise people."

* * *

A/N: Someone drew Freed and Bickslow with facial hair on Tumblr, and I saw it and I decided I had to put it into a fic. This was the one that happened to work the best. I really love it, okay. Don't question it.


	3. Winter

I believe this is the longest chapter of the series, but... I kind of thought it was necessary. Maybe. Can you imagine all of this being in a one-shot though? I think it works better as a miniseries though.

Also... This is kind of where I ruined it, since this was where I picked it up again after like six months and worked it into the holiday fic for this year... Forgive me.

Quick note: I had to re-upload the doc since all of my italics disappeared for some reason. Anyway, they should be in the right place now, hooray!

* * *

 **Winter**

"Come on, it'll be fun!"

Lucy shook her head at the pair of ice skates Bickslow held up before her. "No. No no no," she insisted. "I am not going ice skating." She'd been twice before in her entire thirty-three years, and both times, it had ended with her falling flat on her ass and someone ( _Natsu_ ) almost slicing her fingers off. Lucy didn't exactly want to relive that.

Bickslow dropped the skates back into the box behind the counter and shook his head. "You're no fun," he muttered. "You used to be fun, Cosplayer."

"I'm still fun!"

"Then come ice skating with me."

"No!"

"See? No fun."

Lucy rolled her eyes and turned to go explore his shop some more.

It was December now, and the snowy weather had already reached Crocus. For the past week, every day she'd gone to visit Bickslow in his shop, she'd gotten to walk in the snow and admire the Christmas lights that hung across the streets and wrapped around the lacrima light posts. It was the first time she hadn't spent Christmas with Natsu in over a decade, and she'd be lying if she said that she was completely fine.

There was an emptiness inside her that had just been growing each day, one that grew more painful as time passed. Natsu was still her best friend, that much would never change, but she couldn't help but shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right - that something was missing. Even knowing exactly what it was, that she was just missing her best friend and her family, Lucy couldn't do anything to change how she felt. It was hard to be joyous and festive when she didn't really have a family or even a home anymore. Bickslow could only distract her for so long before she started missing what she'd once had.

She'd been in Crocus for more than six months at that point. At first, it had been the city and the sights keeping her from leaving. But then she'd run into Bickslow, and it had ended up being the highlight of her entire solo adventure, not that she could really call it an adventure anymore. She really hadn't anticipated any of it, but she supposed that was part of what made it all so fun, and that was something she couldn't deny having had plenty of over the last few months.

Almost every day, Lucy had visited Bickslow's shop not to do anything other than just hang out there. For the most part, she'd just loved exploring all of the shelves and seeing what was hidden in some of the far-to-reach corners in his little store. When she'd seen his collection of Canis Minor keys for the first time, she'd had to try not to laugh, partly because she'd never seen so many silver keys at once, much less the _same_ keys, and partly because Bickslow ranting about how common they were had been more than a little amusing. She'd managed to pick up a few simple jobs thanks to the notice board too, and although they hadn't paid much, they'd helped her keep her room at the bed-and-breakfast, which was where almost all of her funds had disappeared over the last six months. Much to Lucy's surprise, it had been cheaper to travel around the country, and with her funds running low, Lucy knew she wouldn't be able to stay in Crocus for much longer.

She hadn't told Bickslow that, though. He'd probably figured it out on his own, but when he was the main reason for her staying there for so long, Lucy just hadn't really wanted to tell him that she would no doubt have to be leaving soon. She didn't even want to leave, and when Bickslow took her to someplace new in Crocus every Sunday, she found herself dreading that moment where she really did have to leave all that more. He'd taken her on tours around the city to all the hidden gems he'd found over the years, to museums, arboretums, adorable little cafes in alleys that no one would've ever suspected. Every Sunday, it had been somewhere new and exciting that just made her fall in love with Crocus even more than she already had. Just a few weeks earlier, Bickslow had taken her to Laxus and Freed's house for dinner and to meet their son - who, honestly, Lucy thought was completely adorable, and she'd wanted to cuddle him the whole time.

"Anyway." She turned away from the row of lacrima snowglobes to look at the stack of fire magic books on the shelf next to her; one of them had a strangely scorched spine. "Did you have anything planned for tonight?" Lucy asked, glancing back over her shoulder. She could just see the register from between the shelves, and Bickslow sitting behind it with a ledger and a pencil before him.

"Ice-skating," he answered. He heard Lucy's sigh from the other side of the room and he couldn't help but quietly snicker. "Tali's got a sleepover tonight so I don't have to go and pick her up from her mum's later, so no, I have nothing planned for tonight." Being a Friday, he often picked Taliyah up from her mother's late in the afternoon, went and picked up something for dinner, and went back to the apartment above his store to crash on the couch with junk food and corny movies. It was like their little tradition now.

"So that's why you suggested ice-skating then, I'm assuming?" Lucy hadn't actually met Bickslow's daughter yet, not that she really cared _that_ much, but she knew Bickslow usually had her on Friday night and occasionally Saturday night, too.

"Yep. The rink opens at the start of December every year. I've been taking Tali on the first day and on Christmas Eve every year since she was five."

"Wait, is that even allowed? I thought you'd have to be like ten or something."

Bickslow shrugged. "No clue. No one's stopped me, so I guess not."

"Well, I think it's kind of sweet that you've been taking her so long," Lucy mused. Traditions were nice to have. She'd had her own with Natsu right up until they'd divorced. Even being separated, they'd still followed through with their usual Christmas tradition of putting up their tree together on December 1st and making gingerbread together afterwards.

"I suppose," Bickslow said. He shut the inventory ledger and tucked it under the counter where it was out of sight. "You know though, it is my birthday on Sunday, so I'd consider it a birthday present if you came ice-skating with me…"

"What? You're totally lying."

"Me? Never."

Lucy rolled her eyes, catching a glimpse of the more than guilty grin Bickslow aimed her way. "Come on, be serious. Is it actually your birthday Sunday?"

"Surprisingly, yes."

"No."

"Lucy, I solemnly swear that I am, in fact, growing another year older on Sunday," Bickslow said. He laid a hand over his heart for effect.

"What? Why didn't you tell me!" she wailed. _Now I have to go and buy him a present, and oh… Damn it, what do I buy him?_ She could barely afford to stay in town as it was, and now she had to buy a present for someone? She had to, though, because it was Bickslow, and… Well, she couldn't _not_ buy him a present because that would just make her feel guilty and she cared about way too much to let that happen.

"…I just did."

She growled under her breath, pouting slightly as she returned to sit on the extra stool Bickslow had behind his register. "I meant _before_ ," she muttered. "Now I have to try and find you a present. I don't even know what to get you now!"

Bickslow shrugged. He wasn't really big on birthdays so he never cared much about doing anything or having anyone get him anything. Freed and Evergreen had always complained that he was hard to buy gifts for, too, so most of the time they'd bought him gag gifts or bottles of whiskey that just sat in the back of his cupboard for years because he usually forgot about them. "You don't need to get me anything," he said. "I don't really want you to worry about getting my anything, either."

"Bicks, come on. It's your birthday. I have to. How old are you going to be anyway?"

"…Twenty-six, and seriously, it's fine."

Lucy reached out to shove Bickslow's shoulder, laughing as she did. "Oh, you liar. I know you're older than me, and if I'm in my thirties then there's definitely no way you're still in your twenties."

"Fine. Thirty-seven. God, I'm getting old…" he sighed.

"Oh, so old," Lucy giggled. "Before you know it, Tali will have her own children!"

Bickslow shook his head quickly. "Nope, no. Don't say it. Don't you say that. Nope."

"Alright, I'm sorry." She supposed it was probably Bickslow's worst nightmare those days. "Anyway, what do you want to do for your birthday? Unless you have plans with like, Freed and Laxus or your daughter or something… In which case, that's totally fine and cool and expected."

"I don't have any plans for Sunday." He smiled softly at the hint of pink that crept up on Lucy's cheeks. "I'll probably see Tali at some point, but afterwards, nothing. I'd still consider it a birthday present if you came ice-skating with me on Sunday night."

"You're really set on taking me ice-skating, aren't you?"

He nodded. "Yes. Yes, I am."

Lucy wasn't sure what his obsession with ice-skating was, or why he was completely set on taking her with him, but she had a feeling it would just save her some future frustration if she just took him up on his offer. She sighed heavily, folding her arms across her chest as she glanced back to the former Seith mage still looking a little too smug for her taste. "If I agree to go ice-skating with you on Sunday, will you promise to never bring it up again?"

"I'll even _pinky_ promise."

 _I do really like pinky promises…_ They were far more important than normal promises which made it even more disappointing when they were broken. She didn't think Bickslow would break his pinky promise, although if he did, she was sure she wouldn't care much since it was only ice-skating after all. So she lifted her hand up to wrap her pinky around Bickslow's finger and shake on it. "Fine, but only because it will be your birthday," Lucy said sternly.

"I'll take it," Bickslow said with a nod. "Now, what are we going to do tonight since I don't have Tali? I vote a take-out feast and some kind of marathon."

"That sounds perfect, as long as it involves Encan."

* * *

Within ten minutes, Lucy fell on her skates almost four times. Even holding onto the edge of the rink, she still managed to fall. Three of those times, Bickslow acted like a show off and caught her, just to skate off ahead of her all smug and pretentious, and three times, Lucy was tempted to take her skates off and throw them at his face.

Despite that, Lucy couldn't even say she regretted going ice-skating. She still hated skating with a passion, but somehow, she was glad she'd gone. Although perhaps that had been more to do with Bickslow having taken her. Had it been anyone else she'd agreed to go with, then she really might have thrown her skates at someone and only slightly regretted it.

At some point, once Lucy had gotten sick of falling on the ice and once a small child had come way too close to slicing off her fingers, they left the rink and continued on Bickslow's birthday adventure - which, really, wasn't anything special at all and it ended up being just like every other evening they spent together, although they did end up getting dinner at a restaurant that was just a little fancy, all because Lucy had insisted on doing something nice for Bickslow since she hadn't been allowed to get him a present (nor had she know _what_ to get him anyway, but she knew from experience that the fastest way to a man's heart was through his stomach, and Bickslow had proved to be no exception).

Come the end of the night, Bickslow walked Lucy back to the cute bed-and-breakfast she'd called home for the last six months. He didn't even bother walking through the picket gate that closed off the path to the building, because he knew for a fact that the old woman who owned the bed-and-breakfast had hired Freed to set up runes around the perimeter a few years earlier. No boys allowed. Apparently she'd gotten sick of her tenants having guys sneak in at night, not that Bickslow had ever done that… Definitely not.

Once standing still, Lucy looked back up to find Bickslow staring at the narrow four-storey building, mouth twisted in a firm line and his brow creased. Either something was bothering him, or he hated looking at the building. Lucy figured the former was more likely since the bed-and-breakfast was whimsical and adorable and no one in their right mind could hate that. "You okay?" she asked softly.

Bickslow sighed and looked back down. "You're going to be leaving soon, aren't you?" he whispered.

"What? I… I don't know. Why would you ask that?"

"Because I know you've been here for ages, and… And six months is a long time to stay in one place when you're supposed to be travelling." A few months, maybe, but not half a year, at least that was how Bickslow saw it. He was complaining, either. If anything, he was worried. "You'd _have_ to be leaving soon."

Lucy wasn't sure how she was supposed to take that. "Do you… Do you want me to leave?" she asked. That was almost what it sounded like. Perhaps Bickslow was just trying to be subtle in his attempt of saying that he was sick of her. Honestly, Lucy wouldn't even doubt that was the case. They had spent almost every day together for the last nearly three months, after all.

Bickslow frowned. "I can't answer that." The last thing he wanted as for Lucy to leave, but he refused to tell her to stay. It made him feel selfish when he thought about asking her to stay, so he was going to keep his mouth shut.

"Uh, okay… Sure."

"I had fun tonight, though," Bickslow said then, the corner of his mouth just lifting up in a smile for half a second. It wasn't lost on him that he'd just completely ruined the mood and had probably upset Lucy by saying what he had. "I'm, uh… I'm really glad you came out with me again."

Lucy forced a gentle laugh. "We always do this. It's not anything new."

"I know, but I still had a good time, so… Thank you." It probably wouldn't have been half as good if it had been anyone other than Lucy. Bickslow was inclined to think that the last three months wouldn't have been half as good if he hadn't walked straight into Lucy on that one day. She'd been like a breath of fresh air in his otherwise monotonous life, and as much as he'd loved it before, Bickslow didn't want to go back to it. Things were better with Lucy around.

"I'm glad too, Bickslow, so you're welcome," Lucy whispered. "I think I'm just going to head up to my room and call it a night, though. Happy birthday, Bicks."

"Thanks, Cosplayer. G'night." He might've stayed until Lucy had made it up the path and inside the house, but the old woman who owned it opened up the door as soon as Lucy was through the gate, and Bickslow quickly scurried away in fear at the broom she shook in his direction. Thankfully, only he could hear the babies laughing about his fear of an elderly woman who was barely five feet tall.

Inside, Lucy couldn't seem to get Bickslow's words to stop echoing in her head.

He had a point. Six months was a long time to spend in one place with just her one (technically, now _two_ ) bag of belongings and no real intentions of settling down. She'd set out to travel the rest of the world and see all of the things she'd only dreamt of seeing one day, not run into an old friend and spend the next nearly three months doing the one thing she shouldn't have been doing considering she'd technically been married just a year earlier. The three months she'd been in Crocus before running into Bickslow, Lucy could easily ignore. She'd still been exploring and seeing all of those things she'd dreamt of. But Bickslow…

Bickslow had gone and ruined everything, because he'd given her a reason to stick around for far longer than she ever should've. And even right then, as Lucy snuggled up to the pillows in the not-at-all comfortable bed in her sparse room and listened to the words echoing in her head, she still wanted to stay.

But at the same time, she knew Bickslow had a point. She would have to be leaving soon.

* * *

A decision was reached just a week later, and Lucy didn't bother telling Bickslow about it until the morning she was leaving. She'd known that if he told her beforehand that she was planning on getting back on the road, Bickslow would plan something outrageous for her to do before she left, and it would just make her want to stay even more.

Still, she was supposed to be travelling and remembering how to be by herself. It was for the best that she left… Right?

It was barely past nine o'clock when Lucy reached Bickslow's small store. She stood outside for a few moments, breath turning to fog in front of her, just staring at the fancy sign above the awning. The first time she'd seen the Fairy Tail branding attached to the bold _Fairy Emporium_ sign, Lucy had almost burst out laughing. Apparently the previous name had been even worse, and Bickslow had been stuck coming up with a new one that wasn't complete garbage, although the new name had definitely confused some little girls and their mothers who had gone in looking for some pretty tutus and fairy wings for parties. Standing in front of it now, Lucy couldn't help but smile.

She pushed the heavy glass door open finally, and the bell overhead dinged with her entrance. With so many shelves in the room, Bickslow couldn't even see the front of the store from the register. It was always quiet in the morning, so she knew Bickslow would either be sitting behind the counter and trying not to sleep, or organising shelves to keep himself somewhat busy. That particular morning, he was dusting the glass cabinet next to the register.

Bickslow glanced up when he heard the footsteps. "Oh, hey. How are you?"

"I'm, uh… I'm good," Lucy responded softly. Although that was probably a lie. "You?"

"Eh, the usual, you know." He turned to toss the used paper towels in the bin behind him, and caught another glimpse of Lucy before he went back to the glass shelf. He noticed the bags then - the leather backpack and the canvas bag swung over one shoulder. "Going somewhere?" he joked. The words were out of his mouth before he even realised what the bags meant.

"Uh, yeah, actually…"

"…You're leaving, aren't you?"

Lucy nodded. "My train leaves at half past."

Bickslow slowly straightened up again, carefully placing the paper towels and the glass cleaner on the top of the cabinet. This was not how he'd wanted his morning to go. He'd started to expect that Lucy would leave at some point, but somehow, he hadn't expected it to be so soon. _Maybe I pushed her to leave._ He had brought it up the week before, after all.

"I see…" he mumbled. "Were you, um… Were you planning this? Or did you just decide randomly…"

"I decided last week."

Now that stung. Bickslow had never regretted saying something so much in his entire life. The last thing he'd wanted to do was be the catalyst for her leaving. But now she was leaving, getting on a train to god knows where, and he was probably never going to see her again.

 _"You could ask her stay,"_ one of the babies said.

He wanted to. Even if it was just for a few more weeks, Bickslow wanted her to stay. But he refused to stand in the way of her doing what she wanted. He wasn't going to be selfish. _I can't do that, babies. I can't ask her to do that._

 _"She would stay if you asked,"_ another pointed out.

That was the worst part. _I know she would._ But he still couldn't do it, no matter how much he wanted to. "So, uh… Where are you going to go then?" he decided to ask. Truthfully, Bickslow wasn't sure he cared where Lucy was heading, because it wouldn't be Crocus and he was inclined to think that was where she belonged.

Lucy shrugged. She hadn't thought about it much. She still wanted to see the beaches of Enca, and the orchards and wineries of Bosco, but it was probably better she explore the rest of Fiore first. "I don't know," she said, a hint of a smile on her lips. It was almost bittersweet, thinking of all the places she could visit and all the things she could see once she'd left Crocus and Bickslow behind. "I'm thinking Astrantia. I've heard it's always really warm up there."

"Sounds nice."

"Yeah…"

"You should probably get going before you miss your train," Bickslow said quietly, looking down to his feet as he ran the sole of his boot over one particularly deep scratch in the hardwood.

Lucy nodded. "Probably, yeah." At that point, she was having to do her best to ignore the tiny voice telling her to stay. Leaving was for the best. It had to be. "I, uh…" Lucy dropped the extra bag she carried then ran straight for Bickslow, wrapping her arms around him. She couldn't quite rest her chin on his shoulder, so his chest sufficed as a resting point for her cheek. "I'm really glad I ran into you here, Bicks."

"Me too, Cosplayer."

Lucy was hesitant to pull herself away once she felt Bickslow's arms wrap around the back of her bag, but if she didn't leave right then, then she probably never would. She was lost for what to say once she stepped back, only forcing herself to smile softly as she turned to pick up her bag again. But then she was reaching up with her free hand to let her fingers just barely touch the side of his jaw and standing on her toes, and lightly pressing her lips to his for a moment.

Once upon a time, Bickslow had joked to his team about how he was going to kiss Lucy one day. He'd forgotten it until right then. It had seemed petty once it had become the only thing he'd wanted to do for the last month.

"Take care, Bickslow," Lucy whispered.

And then she was turning back around with both her bags, and Bickslow could only stand there, unable to get himself to move or say anything as he watched Lucy leave. When the bell on the door rung again, Bickslow's only wish was that he'd asked her to stay.

* * *

The train from Crocus only took her as far as Matza Valley. She had planned on trekking to Astrantia by foot from there, just to visit the national park that was near Dawn City, but with Acalypha also nearby, Lucy decided to take a detour first.

It was snowing in Acalypha by the time she arrived just a few days later. It crunched under her boots as she walked slowly, her joints aching from the constant cold. She'd forgotten how uncomfortable it was to sleep on the ground with just her sleeping bag for warmth. At that point, she would almost give anything to be back in a warm bed again.

It was another half-day trek to her old house. Most of the land surrounding it had been sold off over the years. New houses, parks, and stores filled the spaces. Passing one quaint home, Lucy saw two children building a snowman in the yard, squealing and laughing as they threw messily crafted snowballs at each other while ducking around their snowman. Lucy smiled at them, continuing on her way.

By then, her old home had new tenants, but nothing else had changed. The manicured gardens and hedges were still the same from what she could see, and the yellow walls were still the same light shade and every shingle in the roof was still in its place. Even the golden angel statue in the fountain was there. It brought memories of her childhood back, and with it came an ache Lucy had been doing her best to ignore.

She thought that it would've been fine if she just kept travelling and exploring. She thought that leaving Crocus and Bickslow behind would make her forget how much she longed to have a home and something resembling a family again. She'd lost all of that without Natsu, and while she was still close enough to him that she could very well get on a train and head back to Magnolia to spend the holidays with him, she knew it just wouldn't be the same. Nothing was ever going to be the same with Natsu, but that was fine with Lucy.

The problem was that when Lucy thought about home, and where she may find one, she didn't think of Magnolia or Natsu and Happy. She didn't think of the guild, or even Acalypha - not that she'd ever really considered that her _home_ anyway. She thought of Bickslow and she thought of Crocus. And when she though of Bickslow and Crocus, all she wanted to do was be back there.

* * *

Bickslow sighed and dropped the large cardboard box he was holding as he heard the bell on his door chime. _I guess I forgot to lock the door tonight._ He knew the sign hanging on the door was set to closed, but apparently someone didn't know how to read. "We're closed," he called out, wandering back out to the front of the store and between the shelves to meet the visitor.

"Even for me?"

Bickslow's heart raced as he rounded the last shelf to come face to face with the owner of the familiar voice. He'd known it was Lucy just from the voice, but seeing her there was just something else entirely. "What… You… I thought…" He didn't know what he was supposed to say. When Lucy had left two weeks earlier, Bickslow had fully expected to never see her again - but there she was, standing at the front of his store, with tiny snowflakes still dusting her knitted beanie and her shoulders. Bickslow almost thought he was seeing things.

"Come on, is that all I get?" Lucy laughed, shrugging one of her bags off her shoulder to dust the snow away. "I'm sure you can do a little bet—Bickslow!" Lucy squealed as Bickslow rushed forward and lifted her up, wrapping his arms tightly around her despite her backpack still being in the way. Spinning around in the narrow space, her bag caught on the pages stuck to the notice board, and she couldn't help but laugh again as she heard them tear away from the pins holding them in place. "Alright, come on, put me down before something actually breaks."

Strangely enough, as glad as Bickslow was to see Lucy, he still didn't want to destroy anything in his shop. Job requests could easy be rewritten. Even letting Lucy back to the ground, Bickslow didn't let go of her. He was too scared she'd leave again if he did. "What are you doing here?" He held her face face between his palms, her cheeks and the tip of her nose rosy from the cold. Part of him was still convinced he was dreaming and that she wasn't there right then. So he kissed her just to convince himself he really wasn't imagining it, roughly and like a man starved of air, which is almost what he'd felt like over the last two weeks. "I thought you'd be in Astrantia by now!"

"Well, I got halfway there…" she said, smiling nervously. "But then I realised how much I missed being here… with you… So I came back."

He pulled her into another tight hug then. "Do you have any idea how much I missed you? God, I wanted you to stay so bad. Please, _please_ tell me you're staying." Bickslow was sure he wouldn't be able to handle Lucy leaving again.

"Until you get sick of me, at least."

"Cosplayer, I don't think I could ever get sick of you."

With Natsu being the only person she'd been with, Lucy hadn't entirely been sure going back to Crocus was the right move. She wasn't sure what she'd been hoping for by returning to Crocus either, but for the time being, she was just glad that she was wanted there.


	4. Spring

Okay, if I didn't ruin it in Winter, then I definitely did here. I'm predictable and all of my stories have the same recycled plots. (But thank you all the reviews!)

* * *

 **Spring**

"You know, Dad had a huge crush on you in the gui—"

"Oh, no, no no no…" Bickslow walked back into the room at just the right time to rush over to his small breakfast table and cover his daughter's mouth with his hand. He shook his head and smiled sheepishly at Lucy on the other side. "She doesn't know what she's talking about, honestly."

"Hm? What was that?" Lucy said, smirking as she took a sip of her juice.

If it was one thing she'd learnt about Taliyah over the last couple of months, it was that she lived to embarrass the hell out of Bickslow. Perhaps it wasn't her actual life goal (and honestly, Lucy very much doubted it was), but almost every time she'd seen Taliyah since meeting her a few days before Christmas, she'd always had a new story to tell about Bickslow. Lucy's favourite to date was the one where he'd locked himself out of his own store on his thirty-second birthday and decided to break the window on the door to unlock it and let himself in, and the restaurant owners across the stress had called the Crocus police on him, thus he'd gotten himself arrested for breaking into his own place. Lucy had of course loved every embarrassing story Taliyah had told her, despite how much Bickslow pouted afterwards.

Still, Lucy hadn't been able to avoid loving Taliyah, either. She looked nothing like Bickslow at all (so much that Lucy had even quietly asked Bickslow if he was sure Taliyah was even his daughter because she was far too pretty to be related to him), with bronzed skin, wavy chestnut hair, and the brightest green eyes that Lucy had ever seen. They were so unnatural and unnerving that Lucy had almost been convinced she was a Seith mage, but apparently she was completely void of any magical ability, at least as far as Bickslow knew.

Taliyah rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out to poke against Bickslow's palm. He pulled his hand away quickly, grimacing and wiping it on his daughter's shoulder. "Ew! Don't lick me! That's gross, Tali."

"Says the one who sticks his tongue out all the time," she pointed out. Bickslow shrugged. "Anyway, he totally had a massive crush on you when the guild was still a thing. He said so."

Bickslow had been sharing stories of the guild since Taliyah had been four. They'd been her bedtime stories when he'd been watching her, and when she'd gotten too old for those, they'd been the stories they laughed about on Friday nights when eating pizza together and watching movies. And he might've, at one point, told Taliyah about the time he and Uncle Freed and Uncle Laxus and Aunt Evergreen had been stupid and tried to take over the guild, and how he'd ended up getting his ass handed to him by a teenager in a cheerleader costume and an overzealous kitty, and how he'd ended being just a tiny bit into that same teenager for a short while. And, while it was technically true, Bickslow was definitely regretting telling his daughter that one story. It wasn't exactly like Bickslow had been planning on dating the girl he'd had a crush on over a decade earlier.

"I mean… It wasn't a _massive_ one," Bickslow mumbled in an attempt to regain some of his dignity, now that his daughter had just gone and blurted out that he'd had a crush on his own girlfriend. He already knew he was never going to hear the end of it anyway. "But, I might've liked you just a little bit… You know, after I tried to kill you and all."

"Smooth, Dad. Smooth."

"Uh-huh. Sure. I believe you," Lucy snickered.

Bickslow scowled and paid little attention to the giggling girls. Instead, he grabbed the lunch box from the bench and put it on the table in front of Taliyah and pointed back to the bathroom. "Come on, you're going to be late for school. Go brush your teeth."

Taliyah groaned, rolling her eyes. "Can't I stay home? I can help you in the shop!" she pleaded.

"Uh, no. Nice try, kid. You had yesterday off. Now go on." He didn't need her mother getting on his case about letting her stay home from school. The only reason he had Taliyah with him right then was because her mother was visiting someone in Seven, or something along those lines. Admittedly, Bickslow hadn't paid much attention to the actual reason because he'd been too excited about getting to have his daughter with him for three whole weeks. It had been a long time since it had been anything more than the weekend.

"Fine…"

Lucy took another sip of her juice before perking up suddenly. "Oh!" Bickslow glanced back to her with an eyebrow raised, watching as she quickly got up from the table to run and grab her shoes and her key pouch. "I wanted to pick up a few things for dinner, so I thought I'd walk with Tali," she explained as she came back out, buckling the belt with her key pouch on it.

"Oh. Uh, okay?" Bickslow mumbled. He was a just a little lost right then. "I thought we were going to order something later?"

"I changed my mind. I feel like cooking something instead."

"…Since when do you _cook_?"

"What, do you really think Natsu was the one who did all the cooking when we were married?" she pointed out. Nearly a decade of being married, and Lucy could count on one hand the number of dishes Natsu had cooked that hadn't ended up tasting like charcoal. She'd become quite the master chef thanks to Natsu, not that she minded.

Bickslow shrugged. "Fair point."

"Did you really have a crush on me, by the way?" Lucy asked, momentarily sitting back down to do up the buckles on her shoes.

"Look, it wasn't a big deal or anything."

"Uh-huh. Sure."

He couldn't help feeling rather small as Lucy got back up and stood in front of him, lips curling into a smirk as she continued to press forward. "Really," Bickslow mumbled, backing into the counter and nervously glancing away. He couldn't do anything about the unflattering shade on his cheeks, even if he'd tried. "It was more like I figured out that I'm really into getting my ass handed to me by tiny women…" It wasn't exactly like he'd been able to tell his daughter that he had a thing for being just a little dominated, so he'd had to settle for saying it was a crush. And, really, no matter how much he did try to deny it, it still held some truth to it.

"Oh." It seemed she was learning new things about Bickslow every day. That particular tidbit was not one Lucy had been expecting, though. "Well… I'm sure I can do something with that."

"Wait, what?"

Lucy only giggled as she stood on her toes to quickly to press a kiss to his lips as Taliyah came back out to collect her lunch. "I'll see you later."

Taliyah quickly hugged him after packing her lunch into her bag, but Bickslow was still too dazed to really notice it. He was at a complete loss for what had just happened, staring blankly at the door that separated his apartment from the stairs leading down to the shop. It took one of the babies nudging his arm a few times to pull him out of his stupor, and he could only sigh once he looked back down to the table that was still covered in Lucy's and Taliyah's breakfast dishes.

Of course he was the one left the clean it up.

* * *

With Spring having arrived in Crocus, Lucy almost wasn't sure what her favourite season was anymore. She adored the gentle breeze and the turning leaves of Autumn, but the blossoming trees and the singing birds brought a smile to her face every time she stepped outside.

"I'm thinking of doing a stir-fry tonight, what do you think?" Lucy asked as she caught up to Taliyah outside, checking to make sure she'd locked the door to Bickslow's shop again.

"…As long as you don't do it with the noodles, because that's gross," Taliyah mumbled.

Lucy nodded. "Rice it is then."

"No capsicum, either."

"What about broccoli?"

"I like broccoli, so yes."

Lucy stopped for a second, gaping at the girl before falling into stride with her again. "A child who _likes_ broccoli? Are you _sure_ you're Bickslow's daughter?" He was the king of take-out and breakfast for dinner. She'd figured that out long before she'd moved in just before Christmas, though. So far, he'd yet to notice that she'd been ridding his cupboards of all his favourite unhealthy snacks - or if he did, he didn't say anything.

"I sure am!" Taliyah grinned. Lucy couldn't help but roll her eyes. "He was kind of miserable when you were gone though, you know," she said quietly.

"Hm?"

"Dad," Taliyah said. "He was really sad after you left. He said he wished he'd asked you not to go."

"Oh…" It wasn't something they'd really talked about since she'd decided to come back to Crocus. She knew Bickslow had missed her - and she'd missed him as well, which was why she'd returned at all - but she hadn't thought it was enough for his daughter to comment on it. The fact Taliyah knew the reason for it was worrying as well. "I didn't know he'd told you about me…" Lucy murmured.

"He tells me everything. It's kind of annoying sometimes."

"Right…" Lucy mumbled. "Why are you telling me this, though?"

Taliyah shrugged. "Because he's happy again. Like he was when he said that a two-year-old would be able to ice-skate better than you could."

"I gues—wait, hey! He did not say that about me."

"He did," Taliyah giggled. Lucy pouted and crossed her arms. Perhaps she'd need to walk Taliyah home from school that day, just to see what else Bickslow had said about her over the months. "He really likes you, though," Taliyah continued softly. "He gets all smiley and weird when he talks about you. I really like you, too, Lucy."

"Aw, I really like you as well," Lucy said, unfolding her arms to wrap one around the girl's shoulders and quickly hug her as best she could while still moving. "I just wish I'd been able to meet you sooner."

"Dad said he kept forgetting every time I asked about meeting you… Really, I just think he was too scared of me embarrassing him."

"Hey, it's his job as your father to embarrass you, so it's only fair you get to do it back to him."

Of all the possible step-parents Taliyah had had in her life, Lucy was by far her favourite. Granted, her actual step-dad was pretty damn cool and he always took her to work with him at the animal shelter, but Lucy? Lucy was still pretty great. As annoying as her father's incessant rambling about Lucy had been over the months, she could see why he always had something positive to say about her. "See? That's what I said!" She laughed with Lucy for a moment before she softly continued, "Mum says she hopes you'll stick around, so then she doesn't have to worry about trying to set Dad up with any of the single mums at school."

"Wait, she does that?"

Taliyah nodded, grimacing. "It hasn't worked out so well…"

"Does that mean… Does that mean he hasn't really… dated anyone?" Lucy asked.

"Not since Mum, I think."

She knew that Bickslow hadn't really dated Taliyah's mother, but Lucy had still assumed he'd had someone in his life at some point. Apparently not, it seemed. If she thought about it though, she could never remember anyone saying anything about Bickslow dating when the guild had been around, either. She could remember Mirajane sighing on day and mumbling something about how he was probably gay, though. Lucy had just never really bothered getting involved with any of it.

Still, Lucy supposed it didn't really matter much whether Bickslow had dated or not. It wasn't like she was much better, having only dated Natsu and then married him when she was twenty-three.

"I think the bell is going to go soon," Taliyah said as they stopped just outside her school. Thankfully, it was only a few minutes walk to the school from Bickslow's store.

Lucy reached into her key pouch to brush against Horologium's key. "You've got a couple of minutes left. Just in time."

Taliyah nodded and then wrapped her arms around Lucy's middle to quickly hug her. "See you later, Lucy!" she said brightly, waving back once she turned to head up the front steps with the rest of the children.

Lucy smiled and waved back at her. "Have a good day," she called out. And for the first time in her life, Lucy couldn't help but feel like an oddly proud parent. She couldn't quite figure out why.

* * *

Bickslow had never been, nor would he ever be, a morning person. It always took him a few minutes to wake up and get his brain online again and actually realise it was morning. That particular morning though, something felt off. While he didn't usually have the babies in their bodies during the day (he'd found that they tended to freak out the residents of Crocus a little), he always put the lost souls back in their original tikis once he'd closed his shop for the day. Come the next morning, they would always nudge him a little to wake him up, and they would stay in the tikis until he went downstairs to open up the store. That morning, the babies nudged him repeatedly, which was what had Bickslow realising something wasn't right.

He groaned, swatting them away as he reluctantly woke up. He didn't get the chance to ask what the babies' problem was before he heard what vaguely sounded like someone softly crying. Bickslow rolled over, reaching out to find his hand hitting nothing but the cold and empty mattress beside him. He heard the muffled sobs again, and he looked over to where a light was shining in the rest of the apartment, just on the other side of the screen dividers. _It must be Lucy,_ he realised. Although why Lucy was crying before the sun had even come up, he had no idea.

He pulled himself out of bed quickly and padded out into his living area. "Lucy?" he whispered.

She was curled up in a ball in the middle of the sofa, head ducked and her arms wrapped around her knees. Bickslow couldn't tell if she had heard him or not, but that didn't matter once he realised for sure that she was crying. Even with just the one lamp on, he could see how she trembled as she tried to keep herself quiet.

Bickslow was careful as he sat on the lounge, gently lifting Lucy just so he could slide under her and let her head rest on his lap. "Lucy, baby, what's wrong?" he asked, pulling her hair away from her face. "Come on, talk to me."

If she'd been able to, Lucy would've done her best to avoid having Bickslow see her like that. She'd barely even liked Natsu seeing her like that, not when he'd always made a point of seeming so level-headed when she knew he'd been just as miserable as she was. The previous year, Lucy hadn't had anything to worry about since she'd been travelling by herself in Oak Town. This year though, she had Bickslow, and as little as she wanted to tell anything to him right then, Lucy knew she didn't have much choice anymore.

"It's…" She sniffled, lifting up the crumpled tissue in one hand to wipe her nose. "It's my daughter's birthday t-today," she admitted with a deep exhale.

"What? I thought you said you never—oh…" The realisation hit him harder than expected. He couldn't even begin to fathom what Lucy was going through. "Lucy, I'm… I'm so sorry," he said softly. Bickslow wasn't sure what else he could say to that.

"Her name was… We c-called her Ember. She w-would've been five today."

Bickslow had admittedly wondered how Lucy and Natsu had fallen apart. It would be two years since they divorced just after Christmas, at least as far as Bickslow knew. But losing a child… Bickslow could only imagine how much strain that would've put on them. "What, uh… What happened?" he asked. "If… If you want to tell me, I mean. I understand if you don't."

Lucy shook her head. She still didn't want to be talking about Ember, but she still felt she had to do it. And it wasn't like she'd told anyone about her anyway. They'd mostly kept to themselves back then, with most of what was left of the guild having moved on to new and exciting places. It had just been her and Natsu back then. Bickslow was part of her life now, for better or for worse (she desperately hoped it was the former), and if she couldn't manage to tell him about her own child, then she had a problem.

"She… Her brain didn't… Didn't develop p-properly," she said shakily, struggling to take in enough air as the tears continued to freely slide down her cheeks, no doubt leaving a damp spot on Bickslow's lap. "S-So the top of her head wasn't really there either… And, u-um… A-And then she died a c-couple days later…"

"God, Lucy… I'm… I'm so sorry," Bickslow whispered again. "I'm so sorry that happened. I can't… I don't think I'll ever know how that feels, but god, am I sorry. Tell me what I can do to help you. Please."

"You don't need to do anything… And there wasn't a-anything anyone could do." She knew that much, because if there had been a way to help Ember, then she would've moved heaven and earth to do so. Back when she'd been pregnant, before they'd known if the baby would be an Ember or a Phoenix (Natsu had persuaded her into liking all fire-related names at some point), they hadn't the slightest idea that anything was wrong. The entire time, everything had been perfect and it had all felt so surreal, finally getting the chance to start their family which was the only thing Lucy had been wanting. From the first moment she'd found out she was pregnant, right up until the last week, it was the happiest she'd been in her entire.

But then Ember had been born, and the perfect bubble Lucy had been in popped, and it had been horrible. They'd known she would die once she'd been born, but it had just been a matter of when, and for those three days, Lucy hadn't slept for even a second. She'd wanted to spend every second she could with her daughter, as painful as it had been, and when Ember did finally pass, peacefully so, Lucy had been holding in her in her arms.

At some point, Lucy had just accepted that Ember had been the universe's way of telling her she wasn't supposed to be a mother. It had been the only way she'd been able to deal with it.

Now though, five years later, Lucy was convinced the universe was just playing a cruel joke on her, because she was pregnant again and for the life of her, she didn't know what she was supposed to do. She supposed a good place to start was telling Bickslow, though. She'd already been avoiding it for the last two weeks.

She sniffed again, lifting her hand to rub across her eyes and dry her face a little. "Bicks?" she said weakly.

"Yeah?"

"I'm pregnant."

Sometimes, Bickslow found himself at a loss for words. Right then was one of those moments. He was still trying to process the fact that Lucy had had a daughter. Now, he had the news that she was pregnant again to deal with, and Bickslow just didn't know where to begin. The only thing he was sure of was that it was way too early in the morning for him to be dealing with any of that right then. "Are… Are you sure?" he asked.

Lucy gave a small nod. "Yeah," she whispered. It was the one thing she was sure of, along with her foolishness and stupidity that had let it happen in the first place. "I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't… I didn't mean for it, and I… I didn't w-want this—"

"It's only a bad thing if you want it to be…" Bickslow mumbled.

"It is… It is a bad thing." Lucy shook her head a held her eyes tightly closed, but the warm tears continued to fall regardless. "You h-have Tali, and what h-happened to Ember… A-And we haven't even been together for six months yet," she pointed out, frantic as she tried to convince herself of what she was actually saying. It couldn't be a good thing. The universe had already proved she wasn't supposed to have her own family.

Bickslow couldn't help but disagree. Granted, it was hard to want the things that came as a surprise, but Bickslow had always enjoyed the unexpected; it was what made life interesting to him. And having a baby with Lucy, as unexpected and surprising as it was, it wasn't the worst thing Bickslow could think of. She had some fair points though, that much Bickslow could agree on, but he wasn't so convinced it would be completely terrible if they did have a kid together. Taliyah had come to be under the same circumstances. "Well, I think there's a difference in having a kid with someone you barely know and having one with someone you love…" he said.

"You're only saying that because you got me pregnant."

"W-Well, kind of," Bickslow admitted. "But I still mean it."

Lucy wished she was glad to hear it, but she wasn't. She couldn't say it back to him, not without it being a lie, and Bickslow loving her just made things more difficult than they needed to be. "This isn't a good thing," she whispered. It just couldn't be.

Bickslow only nodded to himself. "Alright." He knew better than to be offended by Lucy's silence. She had more than enough to deal with as it was. Him admitting how he felt probably couldn't have come at a worse time for her, but he didn't entirely regret it. But he knew when to leave things alone, and that time was right then.

When he moved himself carefully out from under her head, Lucy completely expected (and hoped) that he would just go to bed and leave her out there alone. But then he was crouching back down in front of her and gently lifting her from the lounge, scooping her into his arms with just a little effort. "Come on, come back to bed," he said softly.

Lucy shook her head and protested. It was the one week of the year that she barely slept, and the last thing she wanted was to have Bickslow lose sleep from her being a miserable mess the entire time. "N-No, I… I don't want to disturb—"

"Cosplayer, I'm pretty sure you missed the memo when I said that I love you."

"I didn't miss it…" she mumbled.

"You won't disturb me. Promise," he reassured her, carefully placing her back down on the bed and tucking her in. Sure, he was supposed to be getting up in a couple more hours to get ready to open the store, but Bickslow already knew he wasn't going to be open that day. He had more important things to attend to. "You don't need to worry about me at all."

* * *

A/N: ...I live for the BixLu babies. You all know this by now.


	5. Holidays

Of course the final chapter is the longest of them all, because of course it is. Anyway, I'm not exactly the happiest with this chapter (or even this story as a whole), but... Eh, I'm not really happy with anything I write lately, so it's nothing new. There were things I wanted to add that I didn't get a chance to, so I might return to this AU in the future with a drabble or two. Natsu was supposed to have a lot more involvement, and, well... He basically had zero. Let me know if those drabbles are something you'd like to see?

Regardless, I hope you've enjoyed it. As much as I hate my writing for it, I do kind of like this AU. It's kind of sweet. Kind of.

* * *

 **Holidays**

"Do you ever miss all of it?"

"All of what?"

"You know, being a mage," Lucy said, her hand idly swinging with Bickslow's between them as they walked down Strawberry Street. "Taking jobs and everything else."

In all the years it had been since Bickslow had taken on a mage job, he hadn't once thought about whether he missed it. It had been more than thirteen years since the guild disbanded, and _almost_ twelve since his daughter had been born. Sometimes, Bickslow still had a hard time wrapping his head around how long it had been since he'd completely changed his life, because the time had just gone by so quickly for him. But it had been years since he'd taken a mage job. The last time he'd gone on one would've had to have been when Taliyah was still a baby, and her twelfth birthday was coming up in just a few more weeks so it had to have been at least eleven years since he'd taken one.

Still, that didn't answer Lucy's question, and Bickslow just wasn't sure _how_ to answer her question. "I don't know, to be honest," he eventually said. Lucy pulled away slightly to turn them down another street, away from her old apartment and towards the small cafe near their inn. "I haven't really had the time to miss it, I guess." Between raising Taliyah and running his business, the last thing on his mind had been finding time to find the odd mission. "Why do you ask, anyway?"

Lucy shrugged. "Just thinking about how things used to be when the guild was around," she said with a wistful sigh.

She'd really only been in Crocus for a year at that point, and it hadn't been much longer than that since she'd last set foot in Magnolia, but it felt far longer than that as she wandered the familiar streets with Bickslow by her side. As she walked and took in everything, all of the buildings she'd paid no attention to in all the years she'd lived there, she hadn't been able to help the memories that had come flooding in. A third of her life had been spent walking up and down those streets almost every day - the same third that Lucy still considered to be the best time of her life, at least so far.

On one corner, memories of how she and the rest of Team Natsu had been laughing over the blunder of the mission they'd just completely messed up, stopping to rest because they hadn't slept for the last three days and were all too tired to make it back to the guild. Outside the diner, flashes of the time the whole town had been turned into Ichiyas - although that wasn't exactly a fond memory for Lucy. And past the toy store, Lucy remembered how she'd first met Bickslow.

The only reason she was able to relive all of those (mostly) fond memories was because she'd wanted to go back to Natsu's to sort out some of the things she'd left behind when she'd started her solo adventure. She'd known she wouldn't have the time once the baby came, and with summer having reached Crocus, Lucy had seen no better time to do it. She really wasn't a fan of the Crocus heat.

"You were kind of a daredevil back then, weren't you?" The fact that she was dating that daredevil and having a child with him made Lucy snicker quietly to herself. Perhaps she was drawn to idiots.

Bickslow snorted. "More like I was a moron."

"Well, I'm not even going to disagree," Lucy said. "You used to be so fun back then, though."

"Am I not fun now?"

"No, you are. It's just… It's a different kind of fun, I guess." He'd gone from standing on flag poles and literally dancing on the rafters in the guild (not at all sober, too) and going everywhere on his babies, to having movie marathons every weekend and attending every single fair or event in Crocus that he could, and the only time Lucy ever saw the babies at all was when he was in the apartment. "It's almost like it's more… tame."

Bickslow had never really thought of it that way, but he could see what Lucy meant. "I didn't really have anything to lose back then. There wasn't anything to scare me." Sure, he'd had the Raijinshuu and Laxus, but they hadn't really been enough to stop him from being reckless all the time - which was something he could now admit he had been. But then Taliyah had happened and Bickslow had found a reason to try and settle down and actually take care of himself.

"And there's things that scare you now?" Lucy questioned.

"More than you know."

Lucy worried what that was supposed to mean, but she had a feeling it wasn't something Bickslow wanted to talk about right then, so she decided to leave it for the time being. "Well, you know…" she began, letting out a heavy sigh as she stopped to stare at the bright display in one shop window. There was something far too tempting about buying the bumblebee onesie in the window, but Lucy had made the mistake of buying baby things too early once before. "When we get back, if you want, I could look after the shop while you take a couple of jobs or something."

"Oh, no… That's… That's not necessary," Bickslow shook his head. "I wouldn't be able to take any even if I did want to."

"How come?"

"I'd probably break my neck if I attempted some of the shit I used to do. And then the babies… God, I don't even know what kind of damage those lot would do if I tried to actually control them." It would be like he was a teenager just figuring out how to control them in the first place all over again.

"Well, the offer is there if you ever change your mind. You know, for old times' sake," Lucy said.

Bickslow smiled down at her warmly, giving her hand a gentle squeeze at the time same. "I know, but for now, I think I'm better off sticking with what I've already got working for me." While a small part of him really did want to take Lucy up on that offer, just to try and get back into the whole mage business (or at least, get back onto the _right_ side of it), he really didn't think it would be the smartest idea, at least not right then. He'd settled into the life he'd built over the last decade, and Bickslow wasn't in any rush to go back to how things used to be.

* * *

The sun had finished setting by the time Lucy let herself back into Bickslow's shop and climbed the stairs at the back after locking the door behind herself. Surprisingly, after spending her whole afternoon at the day spa Bickslow had shipped her off to for some unknown reason, all Lucy wanted to do was sit and sleep. She wanted to eat too, of course (because she always wanted to eat and Bickslow had, in fact, commented on it more than once, and he was lucky he was still breathing as far as Lucy was concerned), but mostly, she just wanted to sleep. There was something tiring about being pampered.

"Oh, just in time!"

She'd barely gotten into the apartment before Bickslow spotted her from the kitchen. "Mm, something smells good," Lucy mumbled, hanging her purse up by the door. Whatever it was he'd been cooking with Taliyah that evening, Lucy wanted to try it.

"That would be dinner," Bickslow said as he finished adding everything to the large plate. "Fish tacos specifically, since you seemed to want them so much you mumbled something about being willing to kill me to get them…"

"Did she actually threaten to kill you?" Taliyah asked quietly.

Bickslow nodded, a grimace on his face. "Oh yeah. Definitely." It had been quite terrifying, too, because he hadn't actually known if Lucy was joking or not. And of course, having spent the whole afternoon trying to make the damn things (and of course finding a recipe that didn't actually sound horrendous and included ingredients Taliyah _didn't_ hate, as well as ones that didn't make Lucy vomit on sight alone), Bickslow thought Lucy would be impressed. But she only stared in silence, eyes darting between the plate as he set it down on the table and then back at him, and Bickslow really couldn't help but be a little scared. "Unless…" he began nervously, "Unless you didn't actually want fish tacos for dinner… In which case we could all just go out somewhere instead…"

He had failed to notice how her bottom lip trembled and how her eyes watered, but the quiet sniffle had him jumping back slightly, right as Lucy seemingly decided to burst into tears.

It was probably only the third time he'd seen Lucy cry, but it was the only time he'd been at a complete loss for what to do. It wasn't like it was just a few sobs here and there, either - it was _bawling_ , and it was gross. Bickslow could only watch uncomfortably as Lucy slowly walked herself towards the table to collapse down onto the chair he'd pulled out moments earlier.

"You made m-me fish tacos…" Lucy sobbed.

"Well, yeah…" Bickslow rubbed the back of his neck as he continued to grimace at the sight before them. "Was I not supposed to?"

"I've been w-wanting them all week, and you made them for me b-because you were scared of me," she wailed. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her, at least that was what she was sure of at that precise moment. "You're t-too good to me!"

Taliyah was cautious as she handed Lucy a box of tissues. "Is Lucy okay?" she whispered, returning to her father's side where it was safely out of reach of the crying woman. She was on Bickslow's side with being a little scared, but it was mostly out of confusion.

Bickslow nodded grimly. "Uh, yeah…" he mumbled. "She's just, uh… Crazy. Yeah, she's a little crazy right now. Babies tend to make some women just a little, um… hysterical."

"Was Mum like this?"

"Oh, god no. Thank god for it, too. Your mother's a handful when she's _not_ hormonal and insane."

Taliyah looked back to Lucy for a moment. Hysterical wasn't quite accurate, but still seemed to fit considering the woman was crying over fish tacos, after all. "Shouldn't you be like, hugging her, or something?" she wondered.

"…Probably," Bickslow agreed. A hug _would_ probably help. It was a miracle she hadn't already flipped on him and thrown a tortilla at his head for calling her slightly crazy, because he knew she'd heard it. Still, while Bickslow was convinced it would've been smarter to stay away, comforting his insane girlfriend was probably the _right_ thing to do. That, and Bickslow didn't really want to make his daughter mad at him by leaving Lucy alone. She'd gotten rather bossy since turning twelve, and that honestly just made him scared of what was to come in her teenage years. So, he walked around the table slowly just to awkwardly wrap his arms around Lucy's shoulders - it was hard to hug someone who was sitting down. "Alright, come on… You don't need to cry over some stupid tacos…" he sighed.

"I know, b-but you didn't need to, a-and it's perfect and I love it so m-much," Lucy continued to weep, turning slightly on her chair to hide her face against Bickslow's stomach, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle to hug him back. "You're t-too good to me a-and I love you so much, and I know I never s-said it but I really do!" Why she had even waited until they'd been together for nearly a year to say it, Lucy wasn't sure. She supposed it had been out of fear, because the only other person in the world she'd been with and loved had been Natsu, and they hadn't exactly lasted together.

Still, Bickslow had been nothing but patient with her the entire time, and he' d always tried his hardest to make her happy when she wasn't in the best of moods - which was more frequent than Lucy cared to admit - and she didn't really know what she'd do without him sometimes. There were worse people to have a child with, and she really was glad that it was him.

"I know you do. It's alright," Bickslow said softly.

"I'm sorry I d-didn't say it u-until now! But I p-promise I mean it a-and you're j-just—"

"Lucy, it's fine, really. Don't worry about it. Please just stop crying," he pleaded. Although that might've been a mistake, because Lucy instantly started crying just that little bit louder. Taliyah took that as her opportunity to sneak away to her designated corner of the apartment with a plate of food.

"I'm sorry," Lucy wailed. She was completely aware of how absurd it all was, which made her feel even worse. The only thing that made her feel somewhat better was the fact that it wasn't even the craziest thing she'd cried over in the last six months. A month earlier, there'd been a little family of ducklings waddling down the street near her favourite park, and she'd cried over how cute it was. "I c-can't stop crying now…"

 _Maybe I should've sat down instead._ He had a feeling he was going to be there for a while. "Do you want me to keep hugging you then?"

"Yes… B-But…" She turned her head away from his stomach slightly just to look to the tempting plate in front of her. It really did smell amazing (and it looked even better, which was a constant surprise for Lucy whenever Bickslow did cook), and she really wanted to try it. "I'm really hungry, so…" she mumbled, slightly distractedly, and was then quickly unwrapping her arms from around his middle and reaching for one of the tortillas on the edge of the plate.

It'd be a shame to put all that wonderful food to waste anyway, especially after she had joked about murdering Bickslow to get some, but she'd also done the exact same thing to Natsu when she'd been pregnant with Ember - the only difference was that Natsu had gone and caught the fish himself and burnt it, but it had still been _mostly_ edible.

* * *

Lucy jolted awake in the middle of the night, a cold sweat on her brow and breaths short and shallow. She had to resist the urge to start crying, but that just made it even more difficult to breathe and settle down.

She'd been waiting for that moment to hit her, the one where she realised how stupid she actually was for thinking it was a good idea to have a kid with Bickslow. She'd already had her chance to start her family, and it had failed and that had been the end of it. She'd already accepted that she was just never going to be a mother, at least to her own children, and that had been fine. Once, Lucy had thought it was the end of the world, but it really wasn't. Still, with the baby supposed to be coming in the next few weeks, Lucy couldn't help but be scared, and there really wasn't much in the world that could scare her anymore.

She turned to Bickslow beside her. He was still asleep, of course, being that it was after midnight and he had work in the morning. Lucy supposed she should just let him sleep instead of waking him up, but she really needed him to reassure her and calm her down again. She liked to joke that was his secret talent.

Lucy reached out to gently squeeze Bickslow's arm, shaking him slightly. "Bicks? Bicks, wake up," she said softly.

Bickslow stirred after a few moments, groaning as he slowly came to. He hadn't exactly been sleeping the best over the last couple of weeks, so he hadn't been in a deep enough sleep that he'd reflexively reach out and hit whoever was touching him. "What? What is it?" he mumbled tiredly, eyes heavy as he struggled to turn himself over. "Baby coming?"

"Huh? No, no, it's not that," Lucy said, shaking her head slightly. It had only just gone January, and his first guess was that she was going into labour, because that just made _perfect_ sense.

Bickslow only nodded before collapsing back down onto his pillow. "'Kay…"

Lucy frowned and quickly reached back to turn on the light. Bickslow wasn't falling back asleep on her now, damn it. "Bicks, I mean it. Get up."

Even if he had wanted to ignore Lucy nudging him to wake up (which, he had very much wanted to ignore), he couldn't. Because it was annoying. And there was probably a good reason (at least in Lucy's mind) for her wanting to wake him up in the middle of the night. "Fine, fine…" Bickslow groaned. He stretched his arms above his head before dragging his hand down his face, feigning the urge to go right back to sleep. "What do you want?"

"I'm… I'm scared," she whispered.

"What the hell could you possibly be scared of right now?" _God, what time is it anyway?_ He almost didn't want to know.

"The baby." Although _scared_ would still be putting it mildly. She was terrified. Strangely, the only thing that didn't frighten her was actually having to give birth - or at least it didn't frighten her as much as everything else did right then. "I… I don't know how to look after a baby. I don't know how to be a mother. I mean, I barely even remember my own mother now and the closest thing I had growing up was probably Aquarius, and it wasn't exactly like she was the most loving or caring spirit," Lucy said quickly, rambling as she propped herself back up on all her pillows and trying to get somewhat comfortable again. "And then you… You've been a dad for so long already because of Taliyah and you'll be so good with the baby, I know you will, but then you'll think that it was a mistake because I'll be so horrible with them and you'll hate me and I really don't want you to hate me for being a horrible mother."

Bickslow let out a heavy sigh. So, perhaps Lucy did have something to be scared of, but that didn't mean Bickslow thought it was warranted. For the most part, he just thought she was being absolutely fucking insane again, but he wasn't going to say that to her face. Well, not with those exact words, at least.

"Alright, come here." Saying that, Bickslow remembered it was far easier for him to move than to get Lucy to move, so he slid forward while still trying to stay under the covers where it was warm, and wrap his arms around Lucy as best he could - although, he couldn't exactly cuddle with her very well those days, since she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant and the kid kind of got in the way. Still, he managed to get one arm around her shoulders, which would no doubt leave his arm feeling rather numb in the next few minutes, and the other got mostly around her waist, so it was close enough. "Cosplayer. Lucy," he said softly, leaning forward to quickly kiss the top of her forehead. "I love the shit out of you, but you're an idiot sometimes."

"…That's not very nice…" she mumbled.

"Well, it's true. Because you will be the _greatest_ mother." Although technically she already was because of Ember, despite how short he life had been. "You're probably the kindest and most loving person I know, and you're going to completely adore that child and be the best thing in their life."

"Maybe… But I still won't know what to do, and you'll hate me for it."

"What makes you think _I_ know what to do?"

"W-Well, because you've already been through all of this with Tali…" Lucy pointed out. "You've already been a parent with a baby."

Bickslow gave a small shrug. "I didn't do as much as you think I did. Her mother did most of the work." He'd visited her all the time, and helped out where he could, but he hadn't really played an active part in his daughter's life until she'd been a year old and her mother had wanted to go back to work. Even then, he'd been more of a babysitter than an actual parent, and that wasn't something Bickslow liked sharing. He was just glad things had changed over the years. "We're about even with how little we know about looking after babies, so I really wouldn't hate you," he admitted.

"That doesn't make me feel any better!" Lucy wailed. "That… That makes me feel worse! God, we're _both_ going to be horrible then. This was a mistake… All of this was a mistake."

"Nah, we'll be fine. It just means we all get to learn together," Bickslow chuckled. "And it wasn't a mistake. You know that."

She did know that. As unplanned as it all was, none of it was a mistake. But when she was almost certain that something was bound to go wrong, Lucy couldn't help but feel she had made a mistake. "I… I guess…" she agreed quietly. "But… But what if something's wrong with the baby? You know, what if… What if they're like Ember?"

"Lucy, the baby will be fine."

"That's what I thought before Ember was born. I can't go through that again," she whispered. "I can't."

He leant forward again to rest his forehead against hers, bringing his arm around her waist back up to her cheek to rest it there for a moment. "Everything will be fine, okay? _Charlie_ , or _Grace_ , or whatever we decide to call them, will be fine and absolutely perfect."

"You can't promise that."

"No, but I can have hope that everything will be fine, and that's something you need to have a little of as well."

Lucy wished she had that, but she wasn't capable of it. She wasn't strong enough to believe things would work out, because she'd been down that path before and it had been the worst time of her life. It was _easy_ for Bickslow to have hope. He hadn't had to deal with the same things she had, and there was a small part of her that resented him for that. He wouldn't be sitting there telling her to have a little hope if he knew the pain she felt.

"Just promise me that you won't hate me when there is something wrong," she whispered. That was probably what terrified her the most, apart from there being something wrong with the baby. She really couldn't go through what had happened to Ember a second time. She _needed_ that baby to perfect, and she needed to know that Bickslow wasn't going to leave her when it didn't turn out that way.

"Lucy, come on."

"Please, just promise me you'll still be here when it happens. Promise that you'll still love me."

The fact she had to ask that of him at all was something Bickslow hated, but he knew there wasn't anything he could do about it. He just hoped that someday he wouldn't have to reassure her that he'd still be there for her. He missed her optimism and her hopefulness, though he still didn't blame her for not having any at all right then. "I'll still love you way too much for my own good, no matter what happens. I promise," he said softly. "You're stuck with me until you get sick of looking at me, Cosplayer."

It brought a hint of a smile to her lips for just a second, and then she gave the smallest nod she could.

"Are you okay now?" Bickslow asked.

"Better…" Lucy murmured. "I'm still worried though…"

"See? You're already a great mother. They constantly worry about their kids." Lucy smiled again, and Bickslow took it as a sign that everything would be okay for another few days. "Now can we go back to sleep?" he questioned. It was cold and it was late, and Bickslow had to get back up in a few more hours to get ready for work.

Lucy sighed and pulled herself away slightly just to reach back and turn the light off again. "Yeah, sorry… You can go back to bed now."

"You need sleep more than I do, Cosplayer."

"I know, but the baby keeps moving so much at night lately… Kind of hard to fall asleep with that…" she mumbled. Sometimes, it was fine. Other times, when she was trying to sleep, it wasn't. It was a miracle she'd been able to get to sleep earlier at all. "Ember never kicked this much…"

"That's a good sign, Lucy."

"I guess so."

Bickslow lifted up the blanket quickly to slide himself down the mattress. "Go to sleep, little one," he said with a kiss to her stomach. He crawled back up the bed to do the same to Lucy's cheek. "You too."

"I'll try," Lucy whispered.

* * *

Lucy couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd had a family Christmas dinner with more than just a few people. It had been _years_ , probably close to a decade, but with her living room so full of life from all their guests, Lucy felt completely at home.

At one end of the table, Taliyah and her step-father pulled the bon-bons apart, just to laugh at the crappy jokes within them. Evergreen with her tiny bump just beginning to show bickered with Laxus about… Well, Lucy was never sure what they argued about, meanwhile their respective husbands just sneaked away to have their own conversation. And Natsu, at the other end of the table, sat and played happily with her eleven-month-old son, tossing him up into the air to catch him and make him laugh, and making tiny animals made of flames dance in his palm.

"You know, if Natsu drops him, I'm not letting him in a fifty-foot radius of Charlie ever again," Bickslow said as he came up behind Lucy, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder.

Lucy almost jumped out of her skin. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" she hissed, swatting his hand away. Bickslow's grin was just downright wicked. "And Natsu isn't going to drop him."

"Are you sure? Because he's already come close a couple of times."

"Says the one who has _actually_ dropped him," Lucy scoffed.

"Okay, that was an accident and you know it," Bickslow defended. The fact that Lucy, Taliyah, and Laxus had witnessed it had made him feel a whole lot worse, too. He was never going to live it down. "It's not my fault he hates sitting still for me."

"Well, he is _your_ son, and you don't exactly like sitting still either…"

Honestly, Bickslow had to give her that one. But thankfully, he had only dropped Charlie once - or at least that was the only time Lucy was aware of. Every other time it had been onto the mattress or the couch anyway. Soft landings were fine, and Bickslow was inclined to think his kid actually _liked_ falling. Charlie was kind of a menace and he always had Bickslow on his toes. He always behaved perfectly for Lucy though, because _of course_ he did.

"Fine. It is my fault he hates sitting still," Bickslow mumbled. Now it was his turn for wishing he could wipe Lucy's smug smirk off her face, although really, he kind of liked it. "Anyway, why are you over here looking all sad? It's Christmas. You're not allowed to be sad. It's against the rules. Stop it."

Lucy sighed as she leant back into his arms. "I'm not _sad_ ," she said slowly. "I mean, I'm… I'm _happy_ , because _almost_ everyone is here and it's great and all…" Of course, it would've been nicer if Gray and Erza had been able to make it, but the snow had been keeping them in Hargeon and they hadn't been able to get to Crocus in time.

"But…"

" _But_ … I'm just… I'm thinking about how great Natsu would've been as a dad," Lucy murmured. "He would've been so good with Ember."

Natsu had probably been more excited about Ember than she'd been, and he'd been just as devastated as she had been when Ember had died. When she'd called him on what would've been Ember's birthday, just as she'd done in the Spring before she'd arrived in Crocus, and told him she was pregnant, he'd been so happy for her that he'd come to Crocus two weeks later just to give her a hug (and scare Bickslow half to death with some not-so-empty threats too, apparently). For the most part, it was Natsu who'd talked her into having the baby at all.

And when Charlie had been born, Natsu had been there as well - although a few weeks later - just because he'd wanted to finally meet the little guy he'd been so excited to hold for all those months. For a while, Bickslow had felt just a little left out, but Lucy had managed to convince him that Natsu hogging all the Charlie-time was like having a babysitter they didn't have to pay while they went and caught up on sleep.

But still, whenever she watched Natsu with Charlie, she thought of Ember, and god, was there was a part of her that wished things had turned out differently. There wouldn't be a single day that passed where Lucy didn't wish that her daughter hadn't died. But she still wouldn't change anything just to go back to that moment and hope for a better ending. She wouldn't give up what she had now - she wouldn't give up what she'd found in Crocus - because she knew that everything that had happened with Ember and with Natsu, it had meant to be. Or at least that was what she kept telling herself, and it was what she'd keep telling herself for the rest of her life. Sometimes you just had to go through the bad times to get to the good times, and she'd done that.

"Yeah, I guess he would've been," Bickslow mumbled. Granted, he wasn't completely convinced Natsu was parent material while he watched the man throw his son into the air and let him get a little too close to the fire, but Bickslow knew he wasn't exactly perfect either. Still, of all the people he could be weirdly raising his child with, Natsu wasn't the worst pick. He wasn't his top pick (Freed, Taliyah's mother, and even Evergreen came before Natsu), but he certainly wasn't at the bottom of the list.

It had just taken Bickslow a little while to realise that he occasionally had to share his child with his girlfriend's ex-husband. That was fine. Mostly. Free babysitter.

"Anyway…" He kissed Lucy's cheek after finally drawing his attention back away from Natsu. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Okay then…"

"Let's have another baby."

Lucy tried spinning around, momentarily forgetting about Bickslow's arms still tightly wrapped around her waist. " _What?_ Are you insane?" she hissed.

"Well, a little, but that's nothing new."

"And you thought _now_ was a good time to bring this up?"

He gave a small shrug. "Well, yeah, kind of." Honestly, he'd thought it was a great time. It was Christmas, they had their family all around them, everyone was in a good mood (well, for the most part), and Lucy talking about Natsu and Ember had kind of just reminded him that he wanted to talk to her about it. "Also, you can't yell at me because we have guests, so it's a perfect time to talk about it," he added with a completely innocent grin.

Lucy scowled and leant back into his chest. She got a bit of a rise out of knowing that the backs of his legs would be burning right about then, since hers had been starting to before he'd decided to sneak up on her. The fireplace in their new apartment was great and all, but sometimes, Lucy forgot she wasn't immune to fire like her former husband was. "That is totally not fair and you know it," she muttered.

"What's new? Anyway, back to my idea. We should _definitely_ have another baby."

She couldn't help but roll her eyes at him. "Bicks, that's stupid. Charlie isn't even one yet. We're not having another baby."

"He's one in like another month. And it's not like you'd get pregnant right away anyway, so he'd probably be two by the time we had another one anyway."

"I… I suppose that's true," Lucy mumbled. "But it's still stupid."

"How is it stupid?" Bickslow asked.

"…I don't know, it just is."

"Cosplayer, you can just say no."

"I… I know that…"

"…So the fact that you _haven't_ said it yet leads me to believe that _you_ might want to have another one too…" Honestly, Bickslow had expected Lucy to say no, with Ember and then all the stress she'd gone through before Charlie had been born. He was more surprised that Lucy hadn't flat out turned him down yet.

And, really, it wasn't like Lucy did want another baby, but she also didn't _not_ want one. And with Bickslow putting her on the spot like that, she just didn't know what she was supposed to say or think. "I just… I don't know, okay?" she admitted quietly, shrugging and letting out a deep sigh. "I haven't thought about it, you know? I mean, I didn't even know I was ever going to have Charlie after Ember."

"But you did, and he's wonderful and he's absolutely perfect, just like I told you he would be," Bickslow said softly.

"I know he is. But… Another baby? I… I really don't know, Bicks," Lucy whispered. "You have to let me think about it."

Before Ember, she would've loved to have two or maybe even three kids, just because she'd always hated growing up alone and she'd never wanted her own children to be lonely and have no one else their age around them. But then Ember had died, and Lucy had accepted that she'd just never really be a mother, so she'd just never thought about having kids again because she'd never seen a reason to. But then Bickslow had stumbled into her life, and with it the best surprise Lucy could've ever asked for - not that she had asked for it, but that wasn't the point - and everything had changed. She'd been so worried about history repeating itself and Charlie ending up the same way Ember had that Lucy hadn't once considered ever having another child after him.

But he really was perfect, and there hadn't been a single thing wrong with him (apart from the fact that she'd made her miserable for eleven whole hours), so maybe it wouldn't be the worst idea to perhaps have another baby. At the very least, she'd think about it again, because there wasn't as much that scared her now.

"Anyway," she sighed then. "Where's this coming from? Why do you want to have another baby all of a sudden?"

Bickslow shrugged again. "Always thought a big family would be nice, and I kind of just _want_ another one," he answered. If he could've, he probably would've had his own little army of tiny Seith mages, but he was just a year off forty and he really didn't want to still be raising _children_ when he was in his sixties. He was getting too old for that. But just _one_ more added to his little troupe? That was totally doable. "That, and… Actually, never mind. There's _two_ too many Dragon Slayers around for me to say that…"

"What? Come on. Now you _have_ to tell me."

Bickslow shook his head. "Nope. I'll tell you later."

"Bicks, no fair," Lucy whined. He couldn't just say that and _not_ tell her. But two could play at that game. He'd taught her well. "If you want another baby, you have to tell me why right now."

"Oh, now _that_ is unfair." Still, if she was going to be like that, then Bickslow just had no choice. Besides, the last time he'd admitted something like that to her, it had worked out in his favour - and was probably part of why Charlie had come to exist in the first place. By that logic, he had nothing to be afraid of. So he quickly glanced back to everyone still gathered around the table and scattered around the room, specifically to Laxus and Natsu to make sure they were somewhat distracted (which, they were, as far as Bickslow could see), and then leant in to whisper the final reason into Lucy's ear.

Across the room, Laxus almost spat his drink on Evergreen mid-argument, just to mutter something about there being things about Bickslow he really wished he didn't know. And with Charlie, Natsu only glanced over his shoulder nervously to see Bickslow grimace right as Lucy's face flushed a deep red. "Well, my guess is you'll be getting another sibling soon…" he chuckled quietly as he went back to playing with Charlie.

"I have a feeling Laxus and Natsu heard that…" Bickslow mumbled.

"Yeah, maybe you should've, uh… waited, to tell me that one…" Lucy said, clearing her throat and feeling the urge to fan her face with her hand. Sometimes, Bickslow was just full of surprises. "I'll, um… I'll definitely think about it… Although right now, I think I need a drink… or three…" A cold shower would probably work too, but she couldn't do that until everyone had gone home. So she unwound Bickslow's arms from around her waist, just to free herself and quickly kiss his cheek before she ventured off into the kitchen where it was thankfully much cooler, and just a little quieter.

While some people could thrive off being alone, Lucy had realised she just wasn't one of them. A family and a place to call home was the one thing she'd craved her entire life, and while it had come in multiple forms over the years - from her spirits, to the guild, and to Natsu as well - the one she had surrounding her that night was the one she loved the most, and with Charlie, it was the one that finally felt complete.

Although expanding that family had certainly become a little tempting all of a sudden, and Lucy wasn't sure it would be a bad thing at all.

* * *

A/N: I wonder how many of you will be able to guess what Bickslow said... Hehehe.


End file.
